


pick me from the dark and pull me from the grave

by citadelofswords



Series: will you come home (and stop this pain) tonight [4]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games), Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Joshua is an Asshole, Other Character Tags to be Added - Freeform, other characters in this fic are spoilers, sora is not an idiot, the obligatory reaper's game fix-it but with a twist, they nerf each other by being in the same vicinity, welcome to exposition hell please enjoy your stay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: Sora twirls slowly on one foot, trying to take all of Shibuya in. The towering buildings and bright lights kind of remind him of San Fransokyo, but he bites his tongue before he can say it out loud. “Is it usually this empty at night?”“No,” Joshua says. “Things are still reconstructing, you could say. It might take some time, but we should be back to normal soon.”or, sora finally makes it to shibuya, but probably not in the way neku intended him to. (you don't have to read the first few parts of this series for this fic to make sense.)
Relationships: Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya & Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: will you come home (and stop this pain) tonight [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1842991
Comments: 12
Kudos: 78





	1. day one

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to some nonsense! if you haven't read the first parts of this series you don't need to have to understand this because all those characters won't be appearing for quite a while. this fic was born out of the wish that the next sora-centric kh game be a twewy followup and now it's a monstrosity (by my standards anyway) so here we go
> 
> unbeta'd as always. titling this was a nightmare but i finally pulled a lyric from still feel by half alive which is close enough

“Joshua!” Sora says, delightedly, and rushes over. Joshua turns to look at him and smiles, something strange and lilting.

“Hello again, Sora,” he says. “I’d say it’s nice to see you, but I think not in these circumstances.”

Sora nods, and rocks on the balls of his feet. Joshua doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d enjoy a hug, so he holds back. “Yeah, I, uh… yeah. But hey!” He looks around them. “This your world?”

“Mmmhm,” Joshua says, with a little grin. “Back to where she belongs.”

“Wow.” Sora twirls slowly on one foot, trying to take all of Shibuya in. The towering buildings and bright lights kind of remind him of San Fransokyo, but he bites his tongue before he can say it out loud. “Is it usually this empty at night?”

“No,” Joshua says. “Things are still reconstructing, you could say. It might take some time, but we should be back to normal soon.”

“And your friends? Neku, Beat, Rhyme?”

Joshua freezes— it’s barely imperceptible, but Sora’s not an idiot, and he’s definitely more perceptive than people give him credit for, so he catches it. “Are fine,” he says, breezily, and that sends warning bells flashing in Sora’s head. “They’re not here, which means I get you all to myself for now.”

“Okay… but when they come back I wanna see them! Hopefully they remember me…” Sora sighs, and kicks at rocks. “I’m never sure exactly what’ll hold between the dreaming worlds and the real ones. But you remember me, right Joshua?”

“I’m a little bit of a special case, Sora,” Joshua says, kindly. “It would, quite frankly, be impossible for me to forget you, and not just because you’re unforgettable.” Sora almost says something about his year long nap in Castle Oblivion, but Joshua continues on, “That said, I’m sure they’ll remember you. Like I said, unforgettable.”

“Good,” Sora says. “I want them to know I kept my promise to come back to Shibuya!” 

Joshua laughs at that, and it isn’t quite unkind. “What about Riku?” he asks. “After that dream you shared, I quite thought you’d be attached at the hip.”

Sora just stares at him, confused. He doesn’t know anyone named Riku. “Who?” he asks, and checks behind him, just in case Neku’s going to come out and tell him Josh is just pranking him, or something.

When he turns back, Joshua’s eyes are wide, and he is clearly schooling the rest of his face into neutrality even as his eyes betray his true feelings. Sora has no idea why he looks like that, but can’t seem to come up with anything to say to make it better. “Ah,” Joshua says. “I see. Never mind, Sora. In the meantime I… believe it would be beneficial to you to make a pact with me, if you’re amenable.”

“A pact?” Sora tilts his head.

“Shibuya has some… special rules, you could say,” Joshua says, grimly. “And I believe we’re about to pilot them.”

The Gummiphone in his pocket goes off at that exact moment, but Sora ignores it, just for a second. “What do you mean?” he asks, guarded. “I’m really tired, Joshua, I’ve been wandering around this city for hours, and when I saw you I thought maybe we could have a fun day hanging around your city even though it doesn’t seem like anyone’s here right now. What do you mean, rules?”

“It’s difficult to explain, Sora,” Joshua says. “But let me ask you this. Do you remember what you were doing when you woke up here? Do you remember finding me? Or do you only remember seeing me and calling my name?”

Sora opens his mouth to say yes, in fact, he does remember exactly how he got here, and wandering around for hours, and finding Joshua— but he can’t. His mouth closes with a snap.

“Check your phone, Sora,” Joshua says, and he sounds so _tired,_ so bone-achingly weary, that Sora barely suppresses the urge to hug him once again. “We’re in for a long week.”

* * *

Sora remembers the timers from the dreaming world, but he didn’t know how they burn to be seared into his skin. And it itches. 

“Six days,” Joshua says, idly, as he examines his own hand. “Makes sense. I don’t think anyone else is here besides me. And potentially Hanekoma. There are no Reapers to drop Noise, or any reason for other missions. The only concern is that we can drop into new days at any moment.”

“Like how I dropped into this day?” Sora asks, tilting his head.

“Mmmmhm.” Joshua looks at his phone again. “However, the mission being finding the Game Master… tricky. Neku had a mission like this once, but the Game Master provided guidelines, and he knew what she looked like. We don’t know who’s running this game.”

“We could hunt for clues!” Sora says. “I’m sure there’s something around that would give us a hint. Or, oh! What about your wings!”

Joshua tenses. “I don’t have those right now,” he says, thin. “I— it’s complicated. A good idea, but unfortunately not possible right now.”

“Oh,” Sora says. “Okay! The old-fashioned way, then.” He thinks for a moment, wondering if he can summon, but his chest is strangely empty where he’d reach for the Genie, or Ariel, or one of his other friends. “You know Shibuya better than me. Where do you want to start?”

Joshua folds his arms, actually taking a moment to think about it. Sora can almost see the gears turning, the options running through his head, but it only takes a moment before he says, “There’s a little cafe on Cat Street. I don’t think the proprietor will be there, but he’s… a friend. Of sorts. He won’t mind if we start there.”

“Right,” Sora says, beaming. “Cat Street it is.”

Something clinks into his pocket and he frowns, patting at his shorts. “Huh?” It’s a trial figuring out which pocket he has to be looking at, but soon enough he’s pulling out two pins— a black one with a skull on it, and a gold one shaped like a crown.

“Pins,” Joshua says. “They’re what gives a Player power. They’re usually all round, though. I’ve never seen one shaped like a crown before.”

“How do you use them?” Sora wonders. “Are they kinda like keychains?”

“I suppose so,” Joshua muses. “Here, let me.” He steps close and takes the crown from Sora’s hand. “Keep that other one safe,” he instructs, as he affixes the crown pin to Sora’s jacket. “There. What do you feel?”

“Warm, mostly.” Sora realizes he hasn’t even tried to summon his keyblade and holds out his hand for it. It appears, comforting in its weight. “Well, that’s good at least. Hey, if you were wearing this pin would you be able to summon a Keyblade too?”

Joshua laughs. “I prefer more efficient methods of violence, personally,” he admits, without any elaboration as to what he means. “So I’d rather not try. I’ll leave you to the blade-wielding. Although, you really ought to make a pact with me. I doubt we’ll face any Noise this week, but just in case we need to split power.”

Sora nods. “Okay. So making a pact makes you more powerful?”

“Well, it gives you power at all. Between the two of us, I think we’d be fine, but it contractually obligates us to keep the other alive. If one of us gets Erased, the other won’t last longer than seven minutes. Without a pact, we wouldn’t last seven seconds. But again,” he says, noticing Sora’s look, “I don’t think we’ll need it until we find this Game Master of ours.”

“Well,” Sora says, thinking, “I would like to make it out of this alive, and not Erased. And you’re cool, Josh. So I’ll make a pact with you.”

He holds his hand out, but falters at the look he’s getting. “What?”

“Nothing,” Joshua says, shaking himself. “You just… You and Neku are nothing alike, but you reminded me so much of him just now. That’s all.”

He grins, and for a moment it looks a little weird on his face, like a devious smirk, but then the feeling is gone, and he takes Sora’s hand.

* * *

They’re most of the way to WildKat when Sora catches the strangest scent on the wind and freezes in place. Joshua keeps going for a few more steps before he seems to realize Sora isn’t following him anymore and he pauses. “Sora? What is it?”

“Something’s up,” Sora says, frowning in the direction of the alley. “I can smell something.”

Joshua looks like he’s raising his hackles. “Can you figure out what it is?”

“No,” Sora says, frowning. “It smells… dark. And sticky.” He glances quickly at Joshua. “Detour?”

Joshua shrugs. “We have nowhere vital to be right now,” he allows, and follows Sora into the dark.

It isn’t long before he’s found the source of the stench, and he gasps, summoning his Keyblade. “Heartless!”

“Huh,” Joshua says. “So not Noise, and not the monsters who destroyed our world, but something else.”

“They’re the littler versions of what destroyed your— ugh.” Sora’s already dispatched one of the Shadows, but there’s a Sonata above him winding up for another attack, and he grunts, “Joshua, can you—,”

“Oh, yes. Sorry. It’s been a while,” Joshua says, and throws himself into the thick of it.

Sora’s well-equipped and still pretty powerful, even in Shibuya with this yawning gap in his chest he can’t name, but his Keyblade doesn’t seem to be hitting with as much strength as it usually does, and he finds himself wheezing a little after the last Heartless dissolves away. Joshua doesn’t look much better, but at least it looks like he’s breathing normally.

“Oh, I miss my old powers,” Joshua muses. “Relying on the pins is so troublesome. Right, let’s keep going. I want to try to make it to WildKat before whoever is Conducting this game decides to send us to Day 2.”

* * *

The cafe is dark and empty when they arrive. Sora, strangely, hasn’t recovered almost any of his Mana, but he finds he has enough energy left to cast a Light spell and let it hang in the air. It’s a nice place. Sora’s never been to a place quite like this before, and he goes to touch one of the murals on the wall while Joshua pokes around.

“Sanae?” Joshua calls, stepping carefully around a pile of broken glass. “Are you back?”

There’s no response. Joshua sighs, shoulders slumping. “Worth a shot,” he mutters, and within a moment he’s behind the counter and opening the cash register.

“Huh?” Sora asks. “Isn’t that stealing?”

“He owes me,” Joshua dismisses. “Also it’s not money I’m after. He keeps a stash of Pins under here, and without Noise to drop any for us we’ll need more power sooner than later. I doubt your Keyblade will upgrade any higher the rate you’re going—,”

“Hey!”

Joshua ignores the interruption. “—and I need a partner who’s in top shape if we’re going to face this Game Master.” He pauses, a handful of pins in one hand, and sighs. “Hm. Hanekoma does overcharge for his coffee. He really won’t miss a few yen.”

Sora pretends to not see. Not like he hasn’t taken some munny from people who wouldn’t miss it in his day, but it feels weird to steal from a disappeared man, even if this Hanekoma does owe Joshua.

“Take these,” Joshua says, and presses a couple more pins into his hand. “If we don’t bump into any more of your Heartless today, we can play around with each other. No tricks.” He smiles like it’s a joke not meant for Sora, but that just seems to be par for the course with Joshua.

“Something’s not right here,” Joshua says, as Sora starts poking around with the pins to see what they do. “I half-expected him to have returned just as soon as the city started building up around us, but things are moving quite slowly.”

“I’m not really an expert,” Sora says, thinking back to Scala ad Caelum, “but I think rebuilding a world takes more time than that? If you haven’t been waiting for long, then maybe your friend’s just not ready yet.”

Joshua shakes his head. “It’s slightly different circumstances,” he says, voice edging on a growl. “If there’s one thing you should know about me, Sora, it’s that the only thing I hate more than not knowing what’s going on is losing control over my city.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reaper's game bullshit is my explanation for why i can never write a beginning to a fic ever. 
> 
> the title of the doc where i wrote this fic is "fuck you nomura i do what i want" and apparently what i want is to write 13k of the most self-indulgent kh/twewy crossover that preserves the canon of both universes and lets them meld while letting sora and joshua be partners in the game to resurrect the world. 
> 
> y’all ever think about the fact that the sora&neku team up would be op. fucking jrpg protags am i right
> 
> joshua's going to be a little more forthright in this fic than i think he'd be in canon, mostly because he's talking to sora and he feels like he can get away with it, and partially because sora's gonna drag a LOT of it out of him over the course of the time they spend together.


	2. day two

Sora wakes up with his cheek pressed against one of the booth tables at WildKat. Ugh, was he drooling? Gross. Carefully, he rubs at his face as he sits up.

Joshua is sitting across from him, texting. “Good, you’re awake,” he greets. “It’s the second day. Whoever’s the Game Master must have knocked us out after that last little conversation we had.”

“Oh,” Sora says. His stomach growls, an uncomfortable reminder that he hasn’t eaten in over a day. “Does, um, your friend have any food?”

There’s a little chime at the door. Joshua turns around to see and jumps up to stand on the seat. “Finally!” he says, to the thin man who freezes at the sight of him. “I was beginning to think you’d never show back up.”

Sora waves at this man, who he hopes is the Sanae Joshua was asking for yesterday.

“J, relax,” Sanae says, as Joshua hops off the seat but acts aloof to try and pretend he wasn’t worried (Sora’s seen this before, though he can’t remember from where). “I was only gone for like a day. Two, max.”

Joshua rolls his eyes. “And you missed the end of the world,” he snarks. “So you better catch up fast.”

Sanae groans. “That explains how dead it is outside. Is this what I get for taking a vacation?” He glances quick at Sora over his dark glasses. “Replace Phones already, huh?”

“No, this is Sora.” Sora waves again, and then gets up and sticks out a hand because that’s polite, right? “He’s from another world. We met him while we were hiding out— he gave us a hand with some troublesome nightmares.”

“Hanekoma,” says Sanae. “Call me Mr. H. You hungry, kid?”

“Yessssssss,” Sora says.

“You are not charging him,” Joshua says. “Charge Neku next time he comes around if you must, but Sora has no yen.”

Hanekoma rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he says, and mouths  _ See what I have to put up with?  _ at Sora, who giggles at him.

“So,” Hanekoma says, turning away to fish out some pastries from under the counter. “You lose your seat, J?”

“Looks like someone usurped it from me before I could take it back, yes.” Joshua says, accepting the bagel he’s offered. “I didn’t think I would need to, seeing as how I’m still here from the original version of our world, but someone seems to have had a bright idea.” He holds up his hand with the timer on it. “I have become a Player and everything.”

Hanekoma whistles. “That didn’t happen last time,” he says. “Whoever this is, they really want you to go through the motions again.”

“So it would seem.”

Sora swallows his mouthful of croissant. “Before?” he asks. “Have you played the Game before, Joshua?”

“Yes,” Joshua says. “It is a long and complicated story, but yes. I partnered with Neku. It was quite the eventful week.”

Sora furrows his eyebrows. “I thought Shiki was Neku’s partner,” he says. “Did he have two partners?”

“He ended up playing the Game three times,” Joshua says, waving a hand. “Again, complicated story. He was banned from ever taking part again because of it, which is quite honestly for the best. Not like you can cheat death like that and get away with it, hm, Sora?”

Oh.

That was the thing he’d forgotten.

Frowning, Sora puts his hand against his chest— cold and still. His heart isn’t beating.

No wonder he feels so hollow.

“I’m dead,” he says. “How did that happen?”

Hanekoma points at Joshua. “I thought you said you didn’t replace Phones.”

“I didn’t!” Joshua says, holding his hands up. “ _ I _ didn’t take his entry fee. It isn’t because of me he can’t remember his death.”

“No, I remember how I died,” Sora says. “The power of waking.”

“The— what?”

“Let it be, Hanekoma.”

Sora keeps one hand on his chest, wishing his heart would start beating again. “It was never meant to be used the way i used it,” he says. “So when I tried, it shattered me. My heart, I mean.” That might explain why his Keyblade isn’t working properly. And, more obviously, the gaping yawn in his chest, growing wider by the hour. “The problem is, I can’t remember  _ why  _ I was using it in the first place.”

Hanekoma turns his look to Joshua, who sighs. “Sora, I have a theory, but you’re not going to like it,” he says. “Remember when I asked you about— ah, someone you didn’t know?”

Sora nods, slowly. “Riku,” he says, and the name feels right on his tongue even though he doesn’t know anyone with that name.

“When you enter the Game,” Joshua says, “you give up the thing that is the most valuable to you when you do. Oftentimes it’s a memory, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be love, or a dream, or your appearance, though especially with love and dreams when you lose them you lose the memory as well.”

Sora squints at him. “So you think that whatever I was doing to use the power of waking, that was the thing most important to me? And that’s why I can’t remember, because it got taken as an entry fee for this game?” He huffs. “That’s a stupid rule. I’d like to give whoever wrote that rule a piece of my mind.”

“Yeah, you tell ‘im, Sora,” Hanekoma says, smirking at the look Joshua shoots him.

“If you win,” Joshua says, “which we will, Sora, then you’ll get it back. If we don’t win, well, we’ll be dead anyway.”

Sora sighs and turns to Hanekoma. “Okay,” he says. “How about you catch me up on all the rules to this game, so I know what I’ve actually signed myself up for here?”

* * *

“Well, good news,” Joshua says, as they leave, with enough exposition to send Sora’s head spinning. “Hanekoma seems to be pissed enough that our world was destroyed and he somehow didn’t notice for a  _ decade _ that he’s actually willing to intervene on my behalf for once.”

“That’s… nice.” Sora’s still trying to untangle some of the meaningful silences and implications Hanekoma left in his lap, so he’s only half listening. “What does that mean for us?”

“It means he’ll be hunting for this Game Master too,” Joshua says. “And he’ll tip us off if he finds anything new. For now, perhaps we should head to 104. Normally it would be pretty busy… but probably not today. Though we can check on the progress of the world, I suppose.”

Sora fiddles with the crown pin on his sweatshirt. “If I’m dead,” he says, slowly, “and my heart is shattered, I probably shouldn’t be using my keyblade.” He tugs the pin off and slips it into an inside pocket of his jacket, so it stays close to his chest, and then tries to summon his Keyblade. Nothing comes, and he grimaces a little. “Pins only, I guess.”

“I’ll teach you a little,” Joshua says. “A shame that Neku isn’t here. I’ve never met any Player more talented with psychs than he is. It’s all that Imagination.”

“You say a lot of words with capital letters,” Sora notes. “Cause there’s a difference between imagination and Imagination, right?”

Joshua chuckles. “Conceptually, no, they’re exactly the same. Imagination, capital I, is just the version of imagination, lowercase i, that has power in the UG, and leverages influence over the RG. That crown pin of yours lets you use your power in the UG. If you kept it on, and there were people in the RG, you’d start to see similar influences in art and style amongst the people. The higher the Imagination, the more influence you have.” He grins. “The higher you could rank up.”

“I have a pretty good imagination,” Sora says. “I wonder if that’ll translate to being able to use psychs well?”

“I’m sure we’ll find out,” Joshua replies, with a lilting smile.

Sora reaches to touch the pocket where he keeps the crown pin, seeking some reassurance, and frowns at the sudden crinkle in one of the pockets of his shorts. They’ve twisted around strangely on his legs— no doubt from ending up in a strange position in the cafe and then not noticing through breakfast— which is the only reason why he feels a stiffness in his back pocket. Frowning, he reaches around to fish around in that pocket, where he doesn’t keep much, only for his hand to close around a card. 

He hasn’t used cards to fight, well, ever. So where did this— oh. Right. When he tugs it out, it has a familiar symbol on the back of it— the Nobody symbol of Organization XIII. Luxord’s wild card. He’d forgotten all about it.

Something niggles in the back of his mind, but he can’t put a finger on it.  _ Could turn the tables, _ Luxord had said, before fading for that second time. Luxord probably would have liked this game, kids gambling with their lives for a chance at reincarnation, Sora thinks ruefully. A weird thing to think about one of Xehanort’s Thirteen, but then again, he had genuinely enjoyed playing games with Sora as their battle, and even called him a formidable opponent. And it  _ had _ been nice to have to use his brain for once instead of just hitting things all the time.

Sora tucks it into the pocket with the crown pin. Maybe it’ll come in handy.

Around the corner, they run into Heartless, giving Sora a chance to really try out the psychs. Once he gets a handle on their execution (and after just conking a few Shadows in the head with a pin in frustration) his combos flow like a dream. It’s not that much different from stacking spells, really, and even Joshua looks slightly impressed once they’ve come out of the battle plane.

“I must say,” Joshua says, “if Neku were here you could definitely give him a run for his money.”

Sora flips one of his pins like a coin and grins. “Maybe I’ll challenge him the next time we see him, then,” he says. 

* * *

No more Heartless wait between them and 104, probably because there aren’t enough people hanging around to make them, so Joshua navigates them in and out of the battle plane a couple of times to demonstrate more effective combos, and explain a little more about how the Reaper’s Game works. Sora feels kind of bad about setting them back in time, since Joshua is clearly antsy about getting the Game won as fast as possible, but the surprised and genuine smile he gets after summoning a particularly large fire-dragon makes him feel a little better about it.

When they cross into the district and pause to look around, Sora notices shadows walking the streets— not Heartless, but the faintest outline of people, blurring motion trails following behind them. It’s a good sign for the world, Sora thinks, and he tells Joshua so, but Joshua isn’t listening to him.

“Huh?” Sora asks, following Joshua’s gaze. There’s a huge screen hanging on one of the buildings above them, plastered in brightly covered graffiti. For a moment Sora wonders if the actual screen has been painted over, but when light flickers over the mural he realizes it’s just on the screen.

Someone crosses in front of the art— a boy with spiky orange hair and purple headphones.  _ Neku! _ He stops at the mural, stares up at the art and one hand slowly comes up to touch the brush strokes. Neither Joshua nor Sora can see Neku’s face, so Sora wonders what expression he’s wearing.

Joshua whirls around suddenly, face twisted in genuine anger. “If you think this is a good way to bait me,” he snarls, to the sky, “then you clearly do  _ not _ know me very well  _ at all _ .”

Sora would disagree, but doesn’t have a chance to retort. Just as there’s a whisper of movement in the corner of the screen, it flickers off. “Hey!” Sora says. 

“Don’t dwell too much on the past, Sora,” Joshua says. “It’s the past. It cannot be changed. Besides, there is nothing on this Earth that would make me regret the actions I took that day. So if our wayward Game Master thinks they can use that against me, they have another thing coming.”

“You’re rattled by it, though,” Sora points out. Joshua blinks at him, and then a smile crosses his face. Clearly forced. Seriously, why do people keep thinking Sora’s an idiot?

“I don’t like when others use Neku as a pawn in their games,” Joshua says, sounding like he’s choosing his words carefully. “He’s rubbed off on me a little in that regard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hanekoma is such a great character and i'm almost sad that i forgot about him for the rest of this fic. in my defense, though, i want this to be mostly about sora, josh, and the kids from both games. just couldn't get the image of "hanekoma walks into the reconstructing shibuya fifteen years late with starbucks" out of my head, so.
> 
> you know i was really intending on keeping a consistent update schedule with this and then it didn't happen. oops. i'll try to get the next bit out sooner, it's got some actual meat on its bones.


	3. day three

“Should we go to that mural from yesterday?” Sora asks, feeling kind of bad that he’s just been following Joshua around like a puppy and fiddling with his pins rather than navigating.

“No,” Joshua says, firmly. “I’m not— that’s more of a day six location. Besides, it feels fairly obvious for our Game Master to be there.”

“All the more reason to check now!” Sora says. “Hey, maybe we can finish this mission early.”  _ Come on, Joshua. Let me in. _

Joshua chuckles. “I suppose you’re not wrong, Sora, but still. I’d prefer to avoid that particular memory if at all possible.” He touches his chest, just above his heart. Sora turns on his best puppy-dog eyes, well honed after sixteen years, and Joshua sighs. “Fine. If we don’t find the Game Master today, then perhaps tomorrow we’ll go.”

Sora nods. “Can we practice more with psychs today, then? I think I’m getting the hang of some of them, but ice magic isn’t really my forte. And there’s something called ‘fusion’ that I can’t make work no matter how hard I try.”

“That’s because fusion requires your partner’s psychs as well as your own.” Joshua grins. “Sora, you should have told me you wanted to fuse, I would have been glad to in a heartbeat~!”

Sora punches him playfully in the shoulder. “Aw, save it, Josh.” There’s another, minute flinch, but Sora doesn’t call him on it. “I can’t promise I’ll be any good at it, but I still wanna try it. Especially if we’ll need it to take out the Game Master!”

“It’s worth knowing,” Joshua says. “And it’ll be interesting to see what our fusion move will look like. Everyone’s is a little different, but I only saw mine and Neku’s.” At Sora’s head tilt, Joshua smirks and says, “We dropped a meteor on our enemies.”

“Whoa!”

Joshua’s smile turns wry, but instead of saying whatever’s actually on his mind he says, “Come on. I know a very good ramen place, if the proprietor is back.”

Sora’s stomach rumbles. “I guess I am hungry,” he admits. But he resolves, as Joshua leads him out of the Scramble crossing, to find out what’s on his mind at some point.

‘At some point’ turns out to be just after a fight with some Heartless that look suspiciously like weird frogs leads to Joshua calling, “Sora, now’s the time to give Fusion a try!” Two Keyblades make their way into Sora’s hands, along with Joshua’s huge white wings, when they complete the Sync, and both of them startle so badly they almost lose their grasp on it. As the last of the Heartless dissolve, Sora stares down at his Keyblades, eyes tracing their shapes over and over again.

Joshua lands next to him, wings spread wide, expression stormy. “Well,” he says, too-casually, “this is nice, isn’t it.”

“No,” Sora says, because these are his Keyblades but his missing heart isn’t here to remind him that they belong to him. “It’s not. I don’t like any of this, not a bit.”

Joshua blinks at him, in some surprise, and within a moment both the Keyblades and Joshua’s wings have vanished again, as the effects of Fusion wear off.

“Stop fucking with me, Josh,” Sora says. “I can’t use my Keyblades without the crown pin or my heart, but they showed up when we Fused. You said you couldn’t use your wings on Day One, but there they were, which means you’re missing something too. There’s something you aren’t telling me and I’m really, really sick of people who refuse to tell me things for my own good, or for their own agenda. We’re supposed to be partners, right?” Sora’s not even that angry, just desperate and tired and so empty. “And we’re friends. So talk to me. Tell me what’s going on so I can actually help you.”

There’s an achingly long silence, where Sora refuses to break eye contact and Joshua seems to only be holding it out of an unwillingness to break first, but finally Joshua shakes his head. “You’re not going to like this story,” he says. “I would hate for you to think bad of me afterwards.”

“Well, the others still seem to trust you,” Sora says, folding his arms, and Joshua holds up his hand.

“Because I—,” he stops, and glances around. “Let’s do this over ramen.”

* * *

Surprisingly, the proprietor of the ramen place is there, even if he barely glances over either Sora or Joshua as he serves them. Not that it matters much, because Joshua tells Sora the entire story, and his head is kind of spinning once he finishes. He sits in silence for a long moment afterwards, absently poking at the ramen in his bowl. Joshua seems equally lost, which is a strange feeling to get from the boy who did all of the things he’s just said he did.

“So you saved them,” he says. “When your world fell.”

Joshua nods. “I couldn’t bear the thought that my world would return without them, or worse, with versions of them that had never been through the Game,” he says. “They… they deserve to keep the happiness they earned. And I wanted them exactly the way they were.”

Sora sticks more ramen in his mouth, trying to think. “So where are their hearts now?”

Joshua touches his chest. “I put them into pins for safekeeping,” he admits. “Just after we escaped the world, with the last of my power as the Composer. Hanekoma did the same for Rhyme during the game and gave her back to Beat, but Beat used her power in battle on occasion. I won’t do that here— they don’t need to be in this battle.”

“And the versions I met in Traverse Town? Were those just shadows of them?” Sora bites his lip.  _ Will they even know who I am? _

“No. That was truly them. I suppose since their Souls were sleeping, they were able to project out?” Joshua shrugs. “No matter. I left them a…  _ muted _ , you could say, version of events in their memory. I needed them to trust me, that I would keep them safe.  _ All of them _ , not just Neku. When I am able to bring them back, their full memory will be restored. And their memory of the time in the sleeping world.” 

Sora relaxes minutely. He’d absolutely befriend Neku and Rhyme and Shiki and Beat all over again, but the thought makes him sad. “So we win. You’ll bring them back to life.  _ Real _ life, not just Reapers or whatever.” Joshua nods. “And what about you? Are you going to become, you know, alive again?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m going all the way back to the top. I’m not the Composer anymore, and I want my seat back.”

Sora tilts his head a little. “Why?”

“Because that’s the only way I  _ can _ bring back Neku, Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme. The only way I can fix our city.”

Sora studies Joshua for a long moment. He only looks fifteen, but his eyes hold the weight of centuries in them. Of however many years he spent as Composer before a rash choice dropped people into his life he could actually call friends. Of a decade spent watching shades of his friends fight nightmares in a pocket world where he knew he could keep them safe until his world reformed. Of however long he spent watching Shibuya struggle to reconstruct until Sora dropped into his life. “This is really important to you, huh.”

“A long time ago, it wasn’t.” Sora could have guessed that, from his story, but he says nothing, “It still isn’t, really, but I’m doing this for Neku. I did this for him once already, bringing him and his friends back, sparing Shibuya. He’d never expect me to do it again.”

“So... this is out of spite?”

“Kind of. Is that a bad reason?”

Sora laughs, and shrugs. Joshua smiles at him, and then his face softens.

“He’d do the same thing,” he says, quietly. “Neku would, I mean. When I picked him, he didn’t care about anyone. Wanted to be left alone. But that week, when we were partners, he insisted on saving people, even if they weren’t on our side. He refused to shoot me, even though it meant he’d be Composer, and he could spare his city. He had no way of knowing I’d changed my mind, and he still couldn’t kill his friend.”

“So you’re doing this because he can’t,” Sora guesses. Joshua nods, looking like he’s had quite enough of being honest for one day, so Sora decides to give him a break and changes the subject. “Okay, so— being Composer. You wrote the rules for the Game?”

Joshua nods, and Sora punches him in the arm. “That’s for stealing the memories out of my head!” he says, but he’s smiling.

“You don’t punch nearly as hard as Neku,” Joshua notes.

“That’s because I was holding back,” Sora says. “In my world I maxed strength so I could—,” He freezes, and shakes himself. “Never mind. Ugh, I hate not remembering all the details.”

“The fact that you can even get that close is a signal that your heart, wherever it is, is strong enough to try and keep a hold of them,” Joshua says. “It’s a good sign, actually.”

“Whatever,” Sora glances away, and then freezes. There’s a flash of someone in the window, a boy, he thinks, with blonde hair and a skateboard under his arm. “Holy shit.”

“What is it?” Joshua asks, but Sora’s already tearing out of the ramen shop.

“Wait!” he yells. “WAIT!!!”

The boy is gone, if he was ever there, and Sora tries to heave in a breath before remembering he can’t, for whatever reason, and chokes instead.

“Sora?” Joshua’s voice comes in through the haze in Sora’s head. “Are you crying?”

Startled, Sora touches his face, to find tears running down his cheeks.

“Who was that boy?” The square is still empty, so it should have been easy to find him again; the fact that Sora can’t is testament to the fact that he’s thoroughly disappeared. Or just his imagination.

“I think…” Sora strains to remember. Blond boy. Skateboard. Blue eyes so like his own, staring back at him, hard as flint but softening into a smile. Sora’s own mouth turns up at the corners, and he touches his chest. “I think he’s my heart.”

* * *

Joshua gets a surprise as they wrap up ramen and head for A-East— Sora gets a busted nose, which is to be expected when you run into an invisible wall in the middle of a city.

“Oh,” Joshua says, reaching out to touch it as Sora casts around in his reserves for a potion, gives up, and casts Cure instead. “Some of the Reapers must be back by now, then.” He grimaces. “Goodness, these are more annoying when you don’t have the master key to them.”

“Oh!” Sora touches the crown pin and pulls his Keyblade from nothing. There’s something like a migraine poking behind his eye now— he supposes it’ll get worse the longer he tries to use his Keyblade while technically dead, but for now he ignores it to point the Keyblade at the invisible wall. There’s a faint shimmer and a sound like a glass door sliding open, and Joshua meets no resistance when he passes his hand through.

“Useful,” he says, with a grin. “Maybe I  _ should _ give that pin a try.”

“Orrrrrrrr we can get your Composer powers back instead,” Sora says, dismissing his Keyblade again and wincing as the headache vanishes, just as quickly as it had come. “And that way we can get our friends back.”

“Very true,” Joshua says. “I’d like to finish this sooner than later, if I’m being honest, so let’s work quick and hope our Game Master doesn’t drop us in a new day when we least expect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case you're wondering about eri, she and shiki are so entwined that when josh pulled shiki out of shibuya eri kind of. came along for the ride? which is also my explanation for why shiki has eri's face in 3d. she's not gonna remember everything but she'll also be the same eri which will make shiki happy. i always want shiki to be happy. nomura please.
> 
> in this house we love some mood whiplash. also is now the time to drop the onesided josh/neku tag on this


	4. day four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember when i said "additional character tags a spoiler"? yeah it's for this chapter. brace urselves lads.

“This ends today,” Joshua says, lying face-down in the middle of the Scramble. “I hadn’t realized how annoying this was until I was forced to live through it.”

“Maybe you’ll rewrite some of your own rules?” Sora suggests, innocent, and Joshua tries and fails to kick out at him. “Did we even make it to A-East yesterday? I can’t remember.”

“I don’t care,” Joshua mutters, rolling onto his back to stare up with hard violet eyes. “I hope you’re ready to walk, because we’re going to Udagawa today. The mural,” he clarifies, at Sora’s head tilt. “I said we would go today, and go we will.”

Sora nods. “Right.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees a flash of silver, but dismisses it as a trick of the light. Joshua climbs to his feet and stretches, looking rather rumpled for someone who hasn’t properly slept in several days.

“Perhaps we’ll stop in a store on the way,” he muses. “I could use a new shirt. I don’t understand how you look completely put together still, Sora; it isn’t like we’ve been fighting different battles.”

“Magic!” Sora pulls on his hoodie. “The three Good Fairies helped make this for me. It’s supposed to defend against darkness.”

“Well, I’m sure you’d be influencing trends left and right if there were any trends left to begin with,” Joshua sighs. “In the meantime, however, I refuse to face our wayward Game Master looking like this.” He grimaces and pulls at his own shirt.

“So let’s find you something new!” Sora beams, and drags Joshua off towards the department store he knows they passed on the way to Cat Street.

“If only it weren’t out of our way,” Joshua sighs. “I’d love to go back to A-East and browse Lapin Angelique. Imagine it, Sora— using a frilly parasol and heels to defeat the Game Master.”

“I wish you’d said yesterday!” Sora says. “We could have gone. I’m not great at styling things, but I could’ve tried! Oh well. We’ll find something okay at the department store, anyway.”

“You’re right about that as always, dear,” Joshua says. Sora feels him tense and carefully lets him go. “Well! If you don’t mind my wandering away for a while, I’ll meet you back at the entrance in twenty minutes. Should you run into any Heartless, I’ll see you in the battle plane, so don’t worry too much about that.”

Sora almost protests, saying he’ll go with Joshua to browse, but he looks at how the mask has shuttered Joshua’s face and decides to let him have his solitude. “Sure! I’ll try to scrounge up some coffee, I guess.”

“Perfect.” Like that, Joshua vanishes, and Sora sighs. He still has so many questions about all of this, but he can wait for his answers. Anyone who’s been trying to handle as much as Joshua has all by themselves wouldn’t want to be bothered by an endless barrage of questions.

There are actual people working in the department store, though they look like they’re sleepwalking, still going through the rote motions. Some of the customers look the same, eyes half-lidded and glassy. Shibuya’s almost back to some semblance of normalcy, but its people still don’t have their full personality.

Which is why it’s a surprise when Sora catches a pair of mismatched eyes across the room and the eyes stare at him in surprise.

“Huh?” Sora says, and then the person darts away. “H-hey! Wait!”

It’s a big store, and since Sora wasn’t planning on shopping he didn’t really want to venture deep into it while Joshua was busy. But there’s another person here— a player? Maybe? And Sora’s not about to let him go. So he wavers for all of a second before bolting after him.

Clearly the kid wasn’t expecting Sora to chase him, because Sora corners him against an out of service elevator bank and he tries to mash the button before realizing Sora’s already there. “Are you a Player?” Sora asks. He wants to grab the boy’s wrist, flip his hand over to look for the timer, but he doesn’t. “Or are you a Reaper? Or are you just— wait, can you see me?” Maybe it’s a stupid question, because this kid clearly ran away from him, but Sora has to be sure. He waves a hand in front of his eyes.

The guy blinks rapidly and then scowls down at him. “Quit it,” he says. “Yeah, I can see you. I don’t know what you mean, Players or Reapers or whatever.”

“You look so familiar,” Sora says, staring at a red and a blue eye and silver hair falling straight around a strong jaw. He’s beautiful, in an unattainable sort of way, and he looks exactly like someone Sora’s dead heart is trying so desperately to remember, if not for those eyes.

“You don’t remember me?” The kid tilts his head. “Then it’s worse than I thought.”

Sora rolls his eyes. “I’m dead, stupid,” he says, with no heat behind his words. “I don’t remember a lot of things.”

“Then you should know, I’m trying to save you.” The boy looks almost eagerly into Sora’s eyes, as though seeking recognition, and it’s almost there, but not quite. “I thought I found you a while ago, but here you are. You’re okay.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” says a voice from behind Sora, and the boy looks up, looking almost bored. “Living people don’t belong down here.”

“I’m just here for Sora,” says the boy, as Joshua comes to Sora’s side and drops a hand on his shoulder. “Be in and out of your hair in a flash.”

“Oh, I’m afraid you don’t know how this world works, then,” Joshua says, smiling that dangerous smile. “Sora’s a Player in the Reaper’s Game. Until the game ends, he can’t go anywhere, unfortunately. There’s nothing of him Above, you see.”

“There is!” The boy folds his arms, looking insistent. “I fought him a couple of nights ago. He’s encased in crystal now. It’s reversible, of course, but here’s the last part of him I need.”

“ _ He _ is right here,” Sora snaps. “And you couldn’t have fought me, because I was here. I’ve been here for the last four days, with Joshua. He’d know if I’d left.”

“Yozora,” Joshua says. “You must go back to the RG. If you have Sora’s heart, you must defend it with your life. Sora cannot return with you until we’ve won the game.”

“Whoa, Joshua, I don’t know this guy,” Sora says. “I’m not going anywhere with him— Hey!”

Yozora presses a hand to Sora’s chest, feeling for a heartbeat that doesn’t exist. A look of understanding crosses his face. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll go, then.” He draws a sword from nothing and cuts through the air, vanishing through it.

Sora rounds on Joshua. “Who the heck was that?”

“A man out of time,” Joshua says, staring where the fabric of the world had torn open. “Come on. At least we know you have a heart to be returned to you, once this ends.”

* * *

Udagawa is… underwhelming. At least from Sora’s perspective. It’s a mural— a pretty one, there’s no doubt, but it’s lost some of its life in its age. Sora honestly expected a little more from the place that Joshua had nearly refused to return to.

Speaking of Joshua, he seems to be just as enraptured as Neku had been in the vision from the screen. His eyes trace over the lines of the mural as though trying to commit it to memory, and eventually he reaches out to follow his gaze with his hands.

“This is where he died,” Joshua says. “Where I chose him.”

“Where you killed him.”

Joshua almost—  _ almost— _ flinches. “Yes. Where I killed him.”

Sora tilts his head. “Did you ever apologize for that?”

“No,” Joshua says. “It would have been a lie, and I don’t prefer to lie. Neku would have seen through it, anyway.”

“It’s so weird,” Sora says, folding his arms. “You have no problem telling me about your feelings, but I get the sense that you don’t tell Neku shit, even though he seems to be the most important person in your existence and you value what he thinks of you over everything. Maybe if you just talked to him like a normal person, things would work out better for you.”

Joshua tips his head against the wall and laughs. “You really need to stop being so perceptive, Sora.”

Sora rolls his eyes. “I had to learn real fast, what with— uh.” He tries to grasp at the memory and fails. “Never mind.”

“I killed him, Sora,” Joshua says. “Twice. There’s no real coming back from that. I hadn’t even spoken to him or his friends in between the end of the Long Game and rescuing their Music from the ashes of our world.”

“See, there’s your problem!” Sora throws his hands up. “I get that you were censured or whatever you said the reason was, but you’re the Composer. More than that, you’re  _ Joshua _ . You figured out details about those dreaming worlds no one else did— you could have found the loophole to go see him and at least explain yourself.”

“You have quite a bit of faith in me, Sora,” Joshua muses. “You see so much of the good in people.”

“Yeah? Well, I can also see the bad in people.” Sora steps forward to poke Joshua in the chest. “I’ve had a lot of practice with that, too. And I’m here to tell you that you might be a selfish, arrogant prick, but you’re not a bad person. Neku knows that too, I’m sure. So maybe once this is over, you can put all that aside and give the one person you actually care about a straight answer for once in your death.”

Joshua stares at Sora, for a long moment, and then huffs out a laugh— a real one, not his sly chuckle. “Oh, Sora,” he says. “I’ve never done a straight thing in my life, and I do not intend to start now.”

Sora cackles at that, and leans against the wall. “Even better,” he snickers, and Joshua grins at him before going still.

“Oh,” he says. “Sora, would you wait here a moment please? There’s someone I very much need to speak to about to come around that corner.”

“Do I really have a choice?” Joshua laughs, and within a moment, has vanished.

With Joshua gone, Sora has a chance to shuffle through his pin collection again. He can’t use any of the psychs outside of the battle plane, but he can figure out some more powerful combos. He wonders if he’ll be able to take any of his psych levels back to the RG, apply them to his magic levels. It’s worth an ask, and either way he’ll have some of the muscle memory left.

There’s a clatter of someone with a skateboard behind him and Sora barely looks up. Probably some living kid who won’t be able to see him, he thinks, but the skateboard’s wheels don’t continue away. There are actual footsteps, and a shadow crosses his field of vision to pause in front of the mural.

Sora looks up and freezes. It’s the blond boy from yesterday, and he’s looking up at the mural with blue eyes that Sora knows well, because they’re his eyes.

The boy looks down and his gaze shutters a little. “Oh,” he says. “Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was—,”

“Roxas?” The name slips from Sora’s mouth unbidden, and he doesn’t know where it or the tears in his eyes are coming from but he drops all his pins to the ground and scrambles up. “It’s you! You’re here!”

“You—,” Roxas takes a deep breath, and his eyes look carefully guarded but so desperate Sora has to reach for him. “How do you know my name?”

“I don’t know,” Sora admits, trying desperately to cast around for any memory that would give him a hint. “But I _know_ _you_ , Roxas. You’re my Other.”

He lets out a soft  _ oof _ as Roxas launches himself at him; living human boy is definitely heavier than some of the Heartless and Noise he’s faced lately, and Sora finds himself stumbling backwards to land firmly on his butt, almost flat on his back. But Roxas needs this, and Sora realizes he needs this too— he feels more complete, with Roxas hugging him, than he’s felt in a long time.  


“Of course I’m here,” Roxas mumbles. “I promised. Wasn’t gonna break that.”

Sora remembers the feeling of a pinky locked around his and opens his mouth to respond when someone else beats him to the punch. “Oh,” says Joshua, from behind him. “This is admittedly unexpected.”

Sora drags his face out of Roxas’ hair to see Joshua standing there with two other people— a boy with silver hair, who looks startlingly enough like Yozora that Sora’s brain nearly shorts out; and a girl with red hair and violet eyes filling with tears.

He knows them. He knows he knows them. But he can’t… can’t find their  _ names _ .

“Roxas,” says the boy, and Sora understands, with dawning clarity, that it isn’t that this beautiful boy looks like Yozora— Yozora looks like  _ him _ . “You okay?”

“Better,” Roxas mumbles, pulling away. He leans up, stretching onto his toes to ruffle Sora’s hair. “Still sucks. Still kinda hurts. But better.”

Sora’s gaze flickers between Roxas and the other two, as Roxas levers himself to his feet and the others seem to waver on taking a step forward. Trying for a smile, Sora makes the choice for them, and moves closer. “I’m Sora,” he says, stupidly, and then curses himself when both of the people in front of him flinch. “Sorry.” 

“Joshua said— look, it’s fine,” says the boy, sounding very much like it’s not fine, and Sora growls because he never wants to see such a heartbroken expression on his face, ever.

“But I know you!” Sora bursts out. “Both of you! And I have Roxas. Or, sort of. I know him, and I have his name back. Why don’t I have  _ you _ back?”

The girl reaches out and takes the boy’s hand and brushes away the tears building in her eyes. “S’okay, Sora,” she says, smiling. “I’m Kairi. This is Riku.” The names hit like blows to the chest, and Sora holds his hand to his stilled heart, willing it to remember.

“Entry fees are entry fees, Sora,” Joshua says, leaning against the mural. “Your Soul may be powerful enough to still grasp at the memories, but not even it is strong enough to recover something as important as a name.”

Riku shrugs. “Roxas is your Other,” he says. “I don’t even begin to understand how something like that works, but he’s probably as close to you as you could get. You couldn’t forget him if you tried.”

Kairi elbows him. “You’re bullshitting,” she teases, and steps closer to Sora. “Joshua says we can’t stay here long,” she says. “But we’ve been looking everywhere for you. For months. We keep dreaming about you, every single night.”

“Oh.” Sora’s chest aches. “Wait, dreaming about me, or dreaming  _ with _ me?” Desperately he tries to grasp at the edge of any of his dreams, but he hasn’t had any with the blackouts.

“Both,” Riku says, looking away. 

“Don’t cry,” Roxas says, punching Sora on the arm. “Then we’ll cry, and it’ll just be a whole sobfest.”

“You three need to go,” Joshua says, folding his arms. “The living  _ really  _ aren’t supposed to be in the UG— you’ll drag more Noise to our location than we need. Riku, remember what I asked you.”

“I know, I know,” Riku waves a hand. “Kai, you still have the keychain?”

“Oh!” Kairi fishes around in her pocket. “I made you this. Aqua taught me how, and Riku helped.” She holds out a keychain, and any protest Sora has about not being able to use his keyblade dies in his throat. It’s a wayfinder, glittering in the shades of blue that are Riku and Kairi’s eyes, and he takes it reverently. It feels more right than any of his pins have, and he holds it close to his chest. “Take some of our light with you, and come back to us. Please.”

“Of course I will,” Sora says, and throws his arms around her. “I’m so sorry, Kairi.”

“Don’t apologize! At least, not right now!” She holds him for a moment and then shoves him away. “Plenty of time to talk once you’re together again. Okay?”

Sora grins and pumps his fist. “Yeah!”

Roxas pulls his Keyblade out— a mirror of one of the ones Sora used when he Fused with Joshua, so  _ that’s  _ why they were so familiar— and opens a portal. Kairi steps through it, and Riku gives Sora a long, pleading look before following her. Roxas shoots Sora one last wobbly smile before disappearing, and when the portal closes Sora feels the emptiness in his chest return— wider than it had before.

Joshua breathes out. “That’s better,” he mutters, and Sora makes to round on him when the world goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry we only get like three seconds of yozora in this fic. i love him a lot but trying to figure out what his deal is is like my biggest migraine trigger right now. also his presence at the end of re:mind throws a lot of my dreams of the next sora game being a twewy follow-up into limbo so. however if y'all haven't seen the video where someone animated the re:mind ending in twewy art style yall GOTTA it took my BREATH AWAY.

**Author's Note:**

> there's lots of bullshit planned for this one so hmu over on [tumblr](https://citadelofswords.tumblr.com/) to chat about it. if you [reblog the post associated with this fic](https://citadelofswords.tumblr.com/post/626353464930385920/pick-me-from-the-dark-and-pull-me-from-the-grave) i would also very much appreciate it!


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